Valdez is part of Alaska
Every Alaska region shares one system — the same maps, the same live radar, the same climate record. Thompson Pass, twenty-six miles up the Richardson from tidewater, is the snowiest place in Alaska — better than forty feet in an average winter and 974 inches the winter of 1952-53. The Chugach stands the Gulf moisture straight up and it falls out on the way over. Behind the wall the Copper River basin is the opposite country: dry, deeply cold, and the source of the gap wind that blows back down the river to the Sound.